{"id":736,"date":"2014-10-20T12:52:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T17:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/?p=736"},"modified":"2014-10-20T12:54:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T17:54:39","slug":"find-something-to-automate-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/find-something-to-automate-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Find Something To Automate This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/robot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-836\" src=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/robot.jpg\" alt=\"robot\" width=\"1000\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/robot.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/robot-300x172.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><em><small>Let&#8217;s see if this little guy is up for some vacuuming&#8230;<br \/>\n<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you have a WordPress blog, or frequent the comments section of any high-traffic site, chances are you know all about comment spam. This blog doesn&#8217;t get much traffic, but boy, spammers love it. At one point, I was getting upwards of 30 spam comments daily- comments I&#8217;d clear from my WordPress dashboard <em>and<\/em> from my email several times a day.<\/p>\n<p>What a waste of time! But I embraced that chore, and stuck with it for weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because it was there.<\/p>\n<p>Here are things human beings are good at:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>developing good habits<\/li>\n<li>developing bad habits<\/li>\n<li>inventing chores for ourselves<\/li>\n<li>despairing we don&#8217;t have time for everything we want to do<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Think about the latter two. Have you ever taken on tasks you didn&#8217;t have to? There may be chores you can reduce in frequency or eliminate outright. If you can, do so.<\/p>\n<p>For the stuff that <em>has<\/em> to be done: <em>could<\/em> it be set on automatic?<\/p>\n<p>My tedious spam deletion, for instance. Did I really have to delete all of those messages, several times a day? Heck no- there are plenty of <a href=\"web-profile.com.ua\/wordpress\/plugins\/anti-spam\/\" target=\"_blank\">WordPress plugins<\/a> for filtering spam. I installed one that&#8217;s been working great so far. No more garbage comments cluttering up my inbox, and a few extra minutes added to my day!<\/p>\n<p>What one chore might <em>you<\/em> be able to automate this week, thus freeing up a little more time to focus on stuff that matters to you?<\/p>\n<p>For instance: do you have automatic payment set up for every utility\/bill that supports it? That saves you a ton of stamps and check-writing.<\/p>\n<p>Do your appliances have any timers, schedulers, or other automation features you&#8217;re not taking advantage of? Is there an affordable upgrade or technology out there that would eliminate a hated chore? I&#8217;m not <em>quite<\/em> sold on a Roomba-like device yet, but I&#8217;m keeping an eye on them because vacuuming is easily my least favorite bit of housework.<\/p>\n<p>Email can be a giant pit of time-wasting, too. Good inbox filtering and automated responses can act as the secretary or bouncer you <em>wish<\/em> you had. Set up folders, and rules to route emails to those folders. Then- if you have the <a href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/work-on-discipline-not-motivation\/\" target=\"_blank\">discipline<\/a>&#8211; choose <em>one time period per day<\/em> when you&#8217;ll focus on email. For the rest of the day, close email and disable notifications.<\/p>\n<p>If you have money to spare, but not time, you can hire help: a housekeeper, a babysitter, maybe even a remote executive assistant who&#8217;ll handle pretty much anything you want them to. Some people swear by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brickworkindia.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Brickwork<\/a> and the like! As a frugal hands-on writer type, that&#8217;s too extreme for my tastes, but it&#8217;s an interesting idea.<\/p>\n<p>Identify one thing to automate away this week. If it works out, challenge yourself to come up with more time-saving tricks!<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are you <em>so<\/em> glad you don&#8217;t have to do anymore, thanks to automation? Let me know in the comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!-- Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag. --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/apis.google.com\/js\/plusone.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><!-- Place this tag where you want the widget to render. --><\/p>\n<div class=\"g-post\" data-href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/106756336697302613382\/posts\/PiBAfvvNmrJ\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s see if this little guy is up for some vacuuming&#8230; If you have a WordPress blog, or frequent the comments section of any high-traffic site, chances are you know all about comment spam. This blog doesn&#8217;t get much traffic, but boy, spammers love it. At one point, I was getting upwards of 30 spam comments daily- comments I&#8217;d clear from my WordPress dashboard and from my email several times a day. What a waste of time! But I embraced&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/find-something-to-automate-this-week\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice","category-software-tips-and-tricks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}